[geeks] Phone system suggestions?

[James Fogg]

> > Interesting.  I've never run the phone switch, but our
> people who have
> > always swore *at* Nortel and *by* Lucent/Avaya.  Apparently
> the Avaya
> > system is much easier to deal with, at least for a
> non-full-time phone
> > admin.
>
> That matches everything I've heard, too.  Avaya is user and
> administrator friendly.  Nortel is cold and distant to its
> users, and downright passive-aggressive to its administrators.

To "phone guys" Lucent/Avaya is crapoid. And horribly expensive and
their VoIP stuff didn't work 3 years ago (corrected by now I hope).

And yes, Nortel might seem cold and distant, it's Unix based. It's
strayed considerably from *nix and I never knew what *nix it was based
on, but it has a *nix core.

Having worked for a few "communications" companies that sold both phones
and routers I've noticed that there is a fundamental difference between
the way phone guys relate to their machines and computer guys relate to
theirs. A greybeard phone guy will program all but the largest phone
sysems from the operators console (phone plus DSS or busy-lamp-field).
Put a phone guy in front of a computer to configure a system and he
suddenly wont recognize his own systems.